we're half awake, in a fake empire
by ledorkone
Summary: You watch her sleep and only partially feel like a creep, you look and look and look at her, watching and waiting for a glitch, a sign, a tell that this is page number 7055 in the book written with blood and pain on the back of your brain, and that she's not really Root. (Somehow, you could always tell. You still killed yourself at the end of the simulation.)


Summary: You watch her sleep and only partially feel like a creep, you look and look and look at her, watching and waiting for a glitch, a sign, a tell that this is page number 7055 in the book written with blood and pain on the back of your brain, and that she's not really Root.

(Somehow, you could always tell. You still killed yourself at the end of the simulation.)

.

Root and Shaw after the reunion, the things we didn't get to see.

* * *

Escape. Run. Kill yourself, to protect them. (To protect her.)

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Your bones are weary and your mind is jaded, worn thin by 7054 version of a reality you weren't sure you'd get to see anymore, crammed all together at the back of your eyes.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Every time she's always, always, alive, and you're always, always dead.

But you're sharing a flat pillow on a shitty bed in a shitty room of a shitty motel, and all you can smell is dried sweat and Root; you wonder what everything means, now that you're both alive.

(You wonder if you're still a danger to her, you wonder if Samaritan might still activate you, if you'll be the end of your own team, like an autoimmune disease that kills the body from the inside. You wonder, you wonder, you wonder.)

You watch her sleep and only partially feel like a creep, you look and look and look at her, watching and waiting for a glitch, a sign, a tell that this is page number 7055 in the book written with blood and pain on the back of your brain, and that she's not really Root.

(Somehow, you could always tell. You still killed yourself at the end of the simulation.)

But her heartbeat is right, and her hand is still fisted at the back of your shirt, her arm across your body a shield you'd never thought you'd want. She makes you want for things you never thought you would, ache in ways you never have before.

You don't sleep. They kept you sedated on and off until day bled into night and minutes became days became months; so you stay awake. You stare at her, at the tracks rutted on her face by your absence and the weight of the world she seems to carry on her shoulders.

Your back is to the wall, but you don't feel cornered.

.

In the morning, when she wakes, you watch her come to with a startled gasp; her arm tightens around you until her eyes focus on you.

"You're really here," she whispers, and she lets go of your shirt for the first time in 5 hours, to press the tips of her fingers to your cheek. You stay still and let her, you breathe.

"I never stopped looking for you," she says, and you pull away abruptly because her words are a cold shower and a broken record you've heard playing again and again and again and again. Your hand flies to the spot behind your ear where the skin is smooth and flat, sanded out by the persistent press of your fingers. Nothing happens, your skin is unscarred and even, but your reaction is as pavlovian as it gets. You see painful understanding flash in Root's eyes, before she looks away and sits up.

"You should rest." The blanket falls off her lap as she sits on the side of the bed. "Silly me, you just got back and I'm already keeping you up all night," she adds, and you swallow dryly at the lack of bite in her tone. She moves to get up, but you grab her wrist to stop her.

"Wait." Her wrist under your fingers is slender and thin, but you feel her pulse drumming fast and true against your skin.

"I know," you say, and you don't tell her that, in the end, it was the only thing that kept you going (she was the only thing that kept you going). You don't tell her that if it wasn't for her you would've bled out on the floor with a needle in your eye.

"I know you didn't," you add, and you don't tell her you watched her watch you take your life seven thousand times; she stopped you the one it mattered.

She's silent while she studies you, you're not self conscious, but you keep your eyes trained on your hand holding her, your grip is firm and her skin against yours keeps you rooted in the moment.

"I'll get you some breakfast," she says, and you squeeze her wrist before letting go.

"Root."

She stops midway when you call her, you lay with your back on the bed and stare at the ceiling.

"No pancakes."

.

(You eat in silence, gulp down the eggs and bacon Root brings back while she looks on from the opposite side of the small desk in the corner of the room. She steals a couple strips and you let her, and you pretend you can't see the smile she hides behind the coffee she's sipping.)

.

You refuse to go back to the subway, and you get angry at Root for trying to talk you into it. She gets angry at you when you suggest they'd be better off without you.

"We weren't better off without you for the past nine months, we need you. I need you."

You stare at her, unconvinced. You're a danger to them, like a rabid dog following the way home out of habit and hunger, only to be put down. You won't let it come to that, you'll put yourself down first.

"Sameen, we don't have time for this," she says, and the exasperation is clear on her face as she begs you just like the other seven thousand Roots had. "She needs me to go back, and I'm not leaving you."

"Well, then I guess we're gonna have a problem."

She's silent for a moment, still as she studies you.

"Were you really trying to bring Samaritan down one agent at a time?" she asks, and she looks at you as if she can see right through you. You scowl as she advances on you, like dog with a bone; you know she won't back down.

"Seemed like the more practical way." You glare at her as she takes another step towards you, but you stand your ground.

"Really," she drawls, eyebrows rising. "Because I think you knew She would lead me to you, and I think you were waiting for that to happen."

"They kept me locked away for months, I had to make sure it was real, that I was really free and that I wouldn't lead them to you," you say through gritted teeth as she stops before you. You stayed away one week, one week of checking your back and counting the steps that separated you from them (from her), one week of hiding in the shadows and putting down Samaritan agents.

She's right, of course. You were waiting for (hoping for) The Machine to find you when it thought it was safe. It left you to rot away for nine months, but you do trust its judgment with Root's life. Still, now you're here and she's here and the very fact that you're still alive poses a threat to her life.

"Were you even going to come back?"

"If staying away meant keeping you safe, then no."

Root's watering eyes tug at something inside you that tightens and tightens until you swallow dryly and look away.

"I can't go back to the subway," you say, and it's final.

She stares at you and sighs, and you know you've won this one.

.

She takes you to one of her secondary safehouses, it's about three miles from the subway and it's still too close for your liking, but you follow her through the corridors and her hand is warm on the small of your back as she guides you over the threshold.

Her touch lingers longer than it used to, and you allow it. You let her have this, and you accept the warmth of her skin as it seeps through your clothes and curls around your spine.

"There's something I need to take care of," she says as she walks to the table in the living room. The red light of a laptop blinks at you and you turn away abruptly.

"I'm going to take a shower."

.

You step into the cramped bathroom with a clean towel and start to undress. There's no windows and the light flickers on with a buzzing sound. The water is cold and the shower curtain sticks to your skin when you move, but you let your senses take over and ground you.

This is real.

You let the water wash over you and take your time like you haven't really allowed yourself to do since escaping. Before that, there was always someone watching, always someone waiting, ready to stick a needle in your arm and put you down for Samaritan to play pretend with; like a kid playing Operation, he cut and poked and probed, trying to understand what makes you tick, and how to make you tock. It was like awake brain surgery: you could feel everything but you were never in control. (You fought and bled and killed to take control back, you protected them.)

You shut the water off and step out of the shower stall, the air is warm and you feel goosebumps rising as it hits your skin.

This is real.

You use your towel to dry your hair and wrap it around your body. When you step into the adjacent bedroom, Root is waiting for you, head cocked to the side as she smirks lazily at you.

"Thought you might want something clean to wear." She nods to the neatly folded, all black items in her hands.

"You just want to see me in your clothes," you say matter-of-factly as you adjust the towel around you.

She doesn't even bother denying it, just shrugs and steps closer to hand them to you. "Not as much as I want to see you out of them."

You gape at her silently before you roll your eyes and cough out a laugh. Before Samaritan, you had begrudgingly come to accept your… fondness for Root. It wasn't love at first sight, you didn't fall for Root hard and all at once. It was slow and painful and annoying, like bleeding to death from a minor wound. She got under your skin and entered your system like a virus, grew on you like some kind of symbiotic parasite that you somehow decided not to cut off at the roots.

But it's different, now.

She's amused as she looks at you, her eyes shining with mirth, but her smile is tender, soft in a way that used to make you antsy, and you feel scribbles of emotions weave a thread around your heart that pulls and pulls and pulls and pulls.

"You're ridiculous, you know that."

"I missed you too, Shaw."

This is real.

.

John stops by early in the afternoon, Bear's leash in one hand and Chinese takeout in the other. He unleashes Bear, and the dog barrels into your legs like a loose cannon. You crouch down, his fur is warm sunlight when you bury your fingers in it. He whines and licks your face, and you see Root and John watching on out of the corner of your eye.

"Hey there, buddy." Bear's tail is swipes wildly on the floor and you smile as you lean closer. "Told you I'd be back."

"Figured you'd be happy to see him," John says, and you nod once as a thank you. He turns to Root and drops bag and takeout on the table. "And special delivery for the lady, I brought the food and the equipment you asked for."

You glance up at them, a bemused frown on your face. They seem at ease with each other, familiar in a way the simulations never indicated before. And since when is Root _a lady_?

"Thanks, Johnny boy. Tell Harry I'll stop by to play soon enough." She grabs the bag and examines its contents, John's lips pull up at the corner in an amused smirk.

"Finch and I can hold the fort for a couple of days," he says, and you feel a weight settle deep down in your stomach. The last thing you'll let yourself be is a burden, you're in the middle of a war, there's no time for reality crises and coddling.

John leaves, and Bear lets a dramatic huff and goes to lie down in his corner. Root sets up the new equipment as you walk to the table and start unpacking the takeout. You pull out the contents of the bag, none of the dishes are your usual order. You're thankful as you swallow down the bile rising in your throat at the memory of the chow mein Greer fed you whenever he was trying to make you listen.

"You know, you don't have to babysit me." You open one of the boxes and pick up some chopsticks, there's enough food for four people, you figure you can leave some for Root for when she's hungry. She regards you silently, her brows knitted in confusion.

"I know your other half needs you, you don't have to stick around and make sure I don't eat a bullet."

The look she gives you is both wounded and affronted and if you could feel bad, you would.

"Sameen," she starts, her eyes bore into you until you lift your head and meet them with yours. "I spent every possible day of the past nine months looking for you."

You knew this already, you just didn't know to what extent she'd go. She's got that desperate look that she wears so well, and you wonder how thin she stretched herself in order to accommodate her robot overlord and still roam the country to look for you. You wonder how you ever thought she'd do anything less than set the world on fire to find you again. That thought curves around your ribs and grips your lungs painfully, and you force yourself to breathe steadily as she drops what she was holding to step closer to you.

"If you even think I'm gonna let you out of my sight, you've got another thing coming." Her voice is calm and firm, and she lifts her hand to tuck a stray strand of your hair, the movement is loud as her fingers brush your ear. "So buckle up, buttercup, because we're in for some close quarters fun times."

Her hand is on your cheek and you think that Samaritan never got the roughness of her fingertips quite right as she slides her thumb up your jaw.

You breathe in, you swallow. You nod.

.

Sometimes you wonder if it would be easier, going back to the start. Things were simpler when you were working for the ISA. You had a job, a purpose. Cole was alive, an Artificial Super Intelligence hadn't fucked you up in the head. All things you'd consider a plus, in your book.

Still, there is one fundamental, irritating variable you're not sure you can take out of the equation anymore.

She's sitting on the floor, back against the couch and laptop in front of her crossed legs. Bear is curled up on her side, his head on her lap. He nudges her hand and whines until she caves in and pets him, long fingers scratching the spot behind his ears.

You shift your weight and lean on the doorway, you take in the picture in front of you and cringe at yourself for being such a sap. As disgusted by your sentimentalism as you might be, you can't deny yourself. You don't want to fight it anymore.

You step into the living room and make your way quietly towards the couch.

"Sitting on the floor is not good for your back," you say as you plop down next to her, she's startled by your sudden appearance, and you smirk, amused.

"Is that your professional opinion, doctor?"

You reach across her lap to pet Bear and she doesn't move back, she just looks at you with curious eyes.

"I really couldn't stand you when we first met," you start, eyes focused on the dog as if you were addressing him. "And look at us now."

A beat, and then. "Sweetie, are you asking me to go steady?"

You lift your head and meet her gaze, the familiar exasperation at her never-ending flow of innuendos seeps like warm honey into the hollow of your bones. She looks incredibly pleased with herself, like she does whenever she feeds you any of her lame lines. It hits you, then, like a sucker punch to the pit of the stomach, how badly you had missed this, and the thought of not being here right now scrapes at your chest like a caged animal.

You rise to you knees and straddle her, you movements slow and deliberate to give Bear the chance to move away. Your eyes never waver from hers.

She lifts her eyebrows and you like that you can still surprise her, that that hasn't changed. "I'm asking you to shut up and let me do this," you say and cup her jaw as you close the space between you, and you feel her breathe in harshly against your lips.

Her mouth is pliant under yours, and you're greedy. She tastes like the wind in your face after escaping the prison and feeling the sun on your skin after months of darkness; her lips are gunpowder matting your hands and the way bourbon feels when it burns down your throat. You figure this is what people mean, when they say love feels like coming home.

She grips your hips like she's holding onto a lifeline, her fingers slip under your shirt and latch onto your skin like she never wants to let go again. You figure there's worse things to carry than the remainder of her touch imprinted on you.

So you'll let her lips help you settle back into your skin, sew you back together as they trace down your throat like uneven stitches.

Nothing is safe anymore, but maybe it doesn't have to be.

Maybe it just has to be real.

* * *

tbh idk what this is, it's 800% self-indulgent and one of those things you have to write cause it just won't leave you alone. thank you fullyajar for betaing and to everybody who put up with my whining. comments are always appreciated!

title from Fake Empire - The National


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